Choosing Equality: Essays and Narratives on the Desegregation ExperienceThe Supreme Court&’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 has long been heralded as a landmark in the progress of civil rights in the United States. But as the forces opposing affirmative action and supporting resegregation have gained ground in recent years, its legacy has been questioned. Some wonder whether the decision did more harm than good, by fomenting a backlash, or whether the desegregation it brought about might not have been accomplished anyway through legislation. Others worry about the racial paternalism they see as inherent in the desegregation project and reflected in the Brown ruling. Choosing Equality includes contributions that give voice to these concerns, yet it provides a strong challenge to this revisionist interpretation. It does so in a unique way, by positioning the issues in the overall national context but focusing on them in the experience of one state, Delaware, that stands as a microcosm of the larger conflict. The State&’s significance to Brown lies in its contributing two of the five cases that were consolidated in the Court&’s review of the litigation. But Delaware&’s own history registered the racial conflict at the heart of the American dilemma: a slave state that fought on the side of the North in the Civil War, it experienced black migration to its cities and the ghettoization that followed but also had black farmers working as sharecroppers next to whites in its southern section. Moreover, while it saw massive resistance to desegregation, it also was the site of one of the largest and most peaceful metropolitan desegregation efforts. This volume offers not only academic analyses of Delaware&’s experience of Brown, set in the broader framework of the debate over its significance at the national level, but also the personal voices of many of the leading participants, from judges and lawyers down to community activists and the students who lived through this important era of the civil rights movement and saw how it changed their future by giving them hope. |
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Contents
Introduction by Robert L Hayman Jr and Leland Ware | 1 |
Race and Segregation | 19 |
A History of Race in Delaware 16391950 | 21 |
2 An Interview with the Honorable Collins Jacques Seitz Conducted by the Honorable A Leon Higginbotham Jr and by David V Stivison | 74 |
Collins J Seitz Jr | 91 |
Remembering Louis Redding | 94 |
Remembering Thurgood Marshall | 98 |
The Difference That Brown Made | 104 |
Jea Street | 194 |
Desegregation and Resegregation | 199 |
Legacies of Brown v Board of Education | 201 |
Haunted by Brown | 207 |
The Centrality of Brown | 224 |
Brown Social Movements and Social Change | 246 |
Race and Sex Segregation in Schools Fifty Years After Brown | 256 |
Prewhite and Postblack The Aesthetics of Oppression | 270 |
A Glass Half Full | 109 |
Education and Desegregation | 117 |
Educational Equity and Brown v Board of Education Fifty Years of School Desegregation in Delaware | 119 |
Lost Opportunity The Failure to Integrate Milfords Public Schools in 1954 | 133 |
Littleton Mitchell | 162 |
11 An Interview with the Honorable Murray M Schwartz | 166 |
The Resegregation Decisions and the New Federalism | 182 |
Charter Schools in the Context of Brown Panacea or Faustian Bargaining? | 276 |
Race Class and Resegregation in Delaware Delaware Schools Fifty Years After Brown | 287 |
The Geography of Discrimination The Seattle and Louisville Cases and the Legacy of Brown v Board of Education | 312 |
Bibliographical Essay by David K King | 356 |
About the Contributors | 378 |
380 | |
Other editions - View all
Choosing Equality: Essays and Narratives on the Desegregation Experience Robert L. Hayman,Leland Ware No preview available - 2009 |
Choosing Equality: Essays and Narratives on the Desegregation Experience Robert L. Hayman,Leland Ware No preview available - 2009 |